Our ER wards are choked with people who have a migrane, or, like just a few days ago, a girl who threw up. To console her, her mother bought her a big bag of chocolate cookies. ?????

I propose that Canada keep its current health care system, but with one proviso: a twenty dollar charge for ER service. All of tha money would go to the hospital. I know that goes against what we Canadians believe in, but it would prevent people with cuts from coming to the hospital unless it was serious. And if you are hurt, perhaps a deeper cut or maybe a broken wrist, 20 bucks will be a small price to pay for faster service.

And Jay, how much are you willing to pay in tax? Because that's what social services cost. Governments to make money, they take it from you and me. Whenever I hear someone wanting more spending, I always wonder if they would still want that spending increase if it was put to them like this:

Mr. Smith: "I would like a thirty-five percent increase in social spending."
Government: "Very well, Mister Smith. Please pay an additional twenty percent income tax." (The longest runnning temporary measure in history.)
Mr. Smith: "Er, um..."

My father, who worked his way through university and has been working hard ever since, should not have to give his hard earned dollars to drug addicts on welfare, who are living in subsidized (sp?)housing and sending their kids to school for free, and if they OD, there's always myu dad to pay for their treatment.

And I think that the war against Molosovic is right. It's just being done wrong. NATO is an out-of-date blundering beast unable to do anything. the UN should have gotton involved from the start. And ground troops should have been sent in ages ago. And the people flying those bombers should keep their glasses on.

And a couple of other points. NATO does NOT equal the US.

And Bryce, my comment about you seeming to love jumping into wars (now at least. Pity you didn't have that attitude back in 1939) wasn't actually talking about the current war or the Gulf, which I agree with (even if the quick response in the Gulf was mainly about the US and oil). Still, Vietnam eh? THAT went well didn't it?

Furthermore, if part of my paycheck is putting the child of a drug addict through school, I should consider myself a very lucky man indeed. Every child deserves the most complete education we can give them.

I consider myself an individualist, but what kind of individuals will we get if we don't educate them?

On second thought...I'm just a walking contradiction, and no one should listen to anything I say.

I'll agree that it does raise the possibilty of more people visiting the doctor for minor things and clogging ERs, but Canada's system's, despite its waiting lists and service cutbacks and constant nurses strikes, is far superior to any kind of pay-to-live crap the Americans have. I certainly don't disagree with the concept of a parallel private system, (we do have a parallel private education system), but without free health care for all of its citizens, a government should be held accountable for all those poverty-stricken individuals who die as a result of they not having health insurance.

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"A Star Wars picture that preaches against greed is a little like Bill Clinton in the pulpit for a chastity-begins-at-home campaign."

Ok, when was the last NATO or UN operation that didn't involve the United States?

The UN is no better a war or peace than NATO.

We (citizens) would like go back to how we were in 1939. Foreign nations pressure our gov't into helping them. That, or a nation requires our help and we see it as a potential threat to us.

We saw Milosevic as a little, growing Hitler (around maybe '36) and we wanted to prevent WWIII.

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"Everything I needed to learn in life I learned from Optimus Prime."

Rule #1 : Always try to help a friend redeem himself from a past mistake.

The current war has two positions from which a moral justification can stem: One, that an ethnic war within Kosovo is likely to send the whole penninsula into turmoil; and two, that the forced relocation and in some cases systematic murder of a population is simply wrong.

As for whether current NATO action is helping, that's probably better left to wiser men then I.

Well, it's good to know where American citizens stand on these issues.

To point a fact, Woodrow Wilson was elected on an anti-American involvement platform before WWI and eventually changed.

However, seeing America as an island whole and unto itself is a regressionist policy. One of the few politicians to believe that the events in Europe posed a threat to democracy around the world was Roosevelt. And even he had to go under the table and around the barn to give war supplies to Great Britian and the Soviet Union. Lend Lease proved critical in a couple of ways. Firstly and most obvious is the critical material that was funneled to the Soviets and the British. But secondly, Roosevelt began, through Lend Lease, to put a portion of America's industiral base on a war footing. Thereby gearing up for war.

In a small way Lindberg is correct. The actions of Hitler should have been dealt with by the European community of countries that were directly affected by agression and who had placed Germany in such a tight box after the Versailles Treaty of 1919. But in a much larger sence Roosevelt was correct that isolationist non action on the part of the United States would prove to be an even greater folly in the face of such agression.

However, to say that the United States should pull back to that sort of isolationism, the sort proposed by Lindberg, during the current age in which we live is just silly. The United States and all of humanity is dependent on a healty world. Some say U.S. should close the borders and turn a deaf ear to the tired and poor of the rest of the world. That is unless we have a U.S. coporation actively economically exploiting the populace of a thrid world county, like say Honduras, or to say that we will only help countries, like say Honduras, becase the leadership in said country promotes such policies that allow the continued exploitation of workers by the U.S. coporations is just as silly.

For humanitarian reasons, actions like the ones taken against the Serbs should be taken when people are being killed and removed from an area simply for what comes down to religious and ethnic reasons. There comes a time in the eventual advancement of Civilization that we can no longer collectivity accept actions like rape and murder couched in nationalistic rhetoric.

Moreover, actions like the ones taken by NATO must be more even handed and extend to the problems of Africa. For example, the LA Times recently ran an article with these statistics. Amount U.N. refugee agency spends daily per refugee: Balkins: $1.23...Africa: $.11.

In Africa: the camps hold as many as 500,000 people. Up to 6,000 die a day from cholera and other public emergencies. In Macedonia: the largest camps holds 33,000. The have been no deaths from public health emergencies so far.

Medical Care: In Africa at some camps, there is 1 doctor per 100,000 refugees. In Madedonia the ratio in some camps is 1 doctor per 700 refugees.

The idea here is not to say that one instance is worse than another. But if justice is to be doled out, let it be done without regard to race, religion, class, or gender. And in this ever shrinking world, let it be done on an even basis, without regard to politics, and without that ever present ideology of "National Interest" in mind. Damn that is a "liberal" concept, but don't you think that after 3000 years that we work together to eliminate such petty land grabs? Until such a time we are going to remain a petty, warlike, and insignificant race of beings.

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Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

But nooo, everybody had to make their own secret deals for land and power. And "crush" Germany.

And then of course, they disarmed, as if everything was going to be all right from then on, so that when the climate they created gave rise to the very type of thing they feared, they couldn't do anything about it.

So they appeased it rather than fight it, West of the Rhine, over Austria, over the Sudetenland... "Peace for our time" ring a bell?

Don't get all riled at us for coming late to a war that your countries were responsible for.

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"Everything I needed to learn in life I learned from Optimus Prime."

Rule #1 : Always try to help a friend redeem himself from a past mistake.

Heh, just when I thought Georgia politicians weren't all bad, some Republican senator (I forget who, but not the guy who wrote the above "Bill of non-rights") is trying to get a law passed forbidding wiccan and other non-christian military personell from practicing their religions (but of course, not stopping the Christians.)

(I really wish I had kept the full story and just posted it here)

Apparently, he was quoted as saying "what next? will we allow people to do animal sacrifice and other weird rituals on bases?"

Er. Weird rituals? Like, say.. eating, even symbolically, the flesh and drinking the blood of your god's child? Transubstantiation? ECCCH!

Bryce, sorry for misunderstanding you, but type isn't the best medium for communication. Intentions behind words can get lost.

I'm not an expert on who voted for what at Versailles. It was a blatantly unfair treaty, but I didn't know that the USA protested so strongly for everyone to be fairer on Germany.

Okay, lets establish blame divided equally.

Versailles was wrong, punished Germany was too much, and was one of the major causes of WWII. Allies to blame

Black Thursday. Germany was recovering, until Americans suddenlty deceided that they hated the smell of shares or something. Stupid Americans too optimistic about the future to blame

Hitler. Hitler to blame

Rhine, Sudetanland et al. Same attitude that the US took. Desperate to avoid a war. Let Hitler run amok. Swallowed his lies. Stupid Chamberlain. Signing treaty with agressive Centauri. (wait, that's not right). Europe, but mainly Britain to blame.

US not getting involved for 4 years, due to desperation to avoid a war. Told itself that the affairs of Europe were not its concern. Americans except Eisenhower's fault

Is that fair?

Oh, and France's fighting ability being crapper than mine after 10 pints, causing them all to hide in their beds. tachy's fault

Is THAT fair? (come on, The causes of WWII I studied when I was 13-14. And beer has destroyed most of those brain cells)